The Tongues of Men

There is an awful lot of writing about writing on the Internet. Awful used to mean inspiring reverence. It doesn’t any more.

I weep about the standard of writing on the web. I weep about the advice given about how to write well. I weep that accomplished writers are coming online so slowly.

I get through a lot of tissues.

After mulling this over for some time, I’m beginning to think that the problems with the majority of writing advice on the web are as follows:

1. Lack of friction

The cost, energy, and time from the old editorial and printing processes do not apply. Any fool can click publish. Many do.

2. Greed

To some the Internet is purely a means to make money, creating a huge market for writing that sells on it, because words are essential to the medium. This means that most of the writing blogs, courses and advice are actually about marketing copy (hooky headlines, keyword dense sentences, ADHD paragraphs, all aimed at a reading age 13).

This is not wrong, of course, and as a content strategist I get very excited about planning great copy for web sites, all the more so when they are web sites that are doing something worthwhile. But the flood of writing-as-commodity drowns out the people who care about other aspects of writing: literature; poetry; writing as a record of language, keeping the soul of a civilisation keen; writing as philosophy, the mode of argument; writing as theology, telling the great narrative of humanity and its purpose; even writing for love.

I wish that true writers would fight back, against the copycat, plagiarist and me-too charlatans who propagate their rubbish by gaming the search engines day and night. But greed is strong.

Plus many established authors seem to be Luddites. Which leads me to:

3. The meta-careerist paradox

A meta-careerist is someone who writes about writing, sells ‘how to sell courses’, or has made a business out of entrepreneur advice.

There seems to be an infinite amount of them on the web. The paradox is this: the people who have the capability to teach widely are not doing what you want to learn. Or put the other way: the people who are worth learning from are too busy doing what you want to learn to teach.

In other words, the best authors are researching and writing books, not blogging search engine friendly articles. They are locked in creative crises, not setting up writing courses. It is possible that true masters will rarely give advice about their field.

That explains why Google returns page after page of writing advice from people you don’t want to learn from.

It explains why I weep.

But surely it doesn’t have to be this way? Surely some amazing, proven authors could cultivate an online presence as well? Surely there as some aspiring, emerging writers who could use the Internet not just as a marketing tool but as one to stretch the creative boundaries of literature: new media bringing new forms? Surely there are people who care enough to fight for language as the world moves online? Who can straddle high poetry and marketing copy without rupturing their intellectual groins?

How strange. That was supposed to be a preamble for a discussion of Margaret Atwood’s editing tips. We’ll have to talk about those later.

I think I just gave myself away.